Recently, I have entered into a sort of family planning stage where my spouse & I thought of having baby in the coming year & we thought of getting Integrated Shield Plans. Its definitely not easy to compare across all the different plans, many insurers also hyped certain wordings like "lifetime coverage" to make it as though its exclusive when its a common feature across all insurers.
I spent hours and hours reading through various sites which provided good tips but none is conclusive of which is good or detailed why its good. The insurers also avoid price competition by having different features, pricing which makes comparison really difficult across the board.
Eventually & kudos to MOH our paternal government which lists a comparison of integrated Shield Plans across the 7 insurers (link here)in a pdf format, which I converted into excel & use color formatting to help me visually see which plans have the best "features" and the average premium costs across lifespan.
You can refer to the source excel here
The dark green color showed the top feature / benefit in that row.
Lighter green implies comparable but lesser benefit or with restrictions.
Dark red implies lack of or absence, lighter red indicates certain restrictions.
The overall idea is to have an overview visually which plan give the best or most benefits & I ranked the first or second for each table. Do note there's some bias in me, for example, I value "inpatient palliative care" highly after my late Dad's been "chased" out of his restructured hospital palliative ward as stage 4 cancer patient to hospice care which do not have any medishield coverage & the costs are easily $4-5k+/month. Fortunately (or unfortunately) his condition deteriorated in his last few days & thus no longer conducive to move out to the planned hospice thus he managed to stay on & passed away. Thus for me, this is a vital benefit that I valued should I ever face the same situation.
Next benefit that I valued are the pre- and post- hospitalization treatment, which I want it to be as long as possible, as quoted by this Today article in April 2021 "complex diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease or gastroesophageal reflux disease, long-term follow up is important, as most of these conditions would not be resolved within three months of the time of diagnosis".
As I am in my late 30s, the final table which I inserted as excel formula to calculate the average across the premiums for each age groups. I also simplified the figures by taking the upper figure of the range for prudent estimate. The final results that I chose is probably GE's SupremeHealth P Plus based on the cost versus benefits (most greened benefits) though the final purchase depends on the level of exclusions as I do have a mild condition that's non-life threatening and in fact no medication needed at all with no functional impacts in any way, but have a potential to lead to cancer if the viral load somehow take a turn for the worst despite being dormant for past 25 years since its discovery. The Today's article highlighted earlier had many good tips that you should ask before purchasing any ISP; I will be asking them when I fix an appointment with my friend's agents. This will be my first time sitting down in a serious discussion with a Financial Planner / Insurance Agent. I do think its prudent from risk management perspective to divert say 5-10% of my annual income into various insurance plans (ISP, pregnancy, critical illnesses, accident, disability, children's education) etc. After all, like the options premiums that I earned, the cost is a necessary protection to my "downsides" in life & my family, provided the protections are comprehensive & trustworthy enough to rely on. Otherwise, I might as well rely on the standard government mandated ones & myself in building my rainy day funds.
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